Conventionally, there is a technique for parking assist of a vehicle, where plural cameras which are mounted on the vehicle take or capture image data as environments surrounding the vehicle and the captured image data are provided to a driver of the vehicle. A known technique for assisting driving of the vehicle in a small area and/or for assisting driving of the vehicle during parking/stopping of the vehicle is suggested. According to the known technique for assisting driving of the vehicle, a front/rear direction mark and/or a right/left direction mark are displayed in a superimposed or overlapped manner over images which are displayed during the aforementioned parking assist. In the images, the above-described marks are displayed at positions that are away from the vehicle by respective predetermined distances so that the driver can refer to or see the marks. Accordingly, the driver's recognition of a positional relationship between an own vehicle and the environments surrounding the own vehicle is facilitated (JP2003-259356A, which will be referred to as Patent reference 1).
However, in a case where the images captured by the plural cameras are displayed and in a case where part of a captured area is included in the images in a duplicated manner between the images, the way the images look and/or impression conveyed by the images may differ from each other depending on positions of the plural cameras. Accordingly, even in a case where the same subject (for example, an object, the front/rear direction mark, the right/left direction mark) is displayed in the plural images, it may be difficult for the driver to understand a relationship between the plural images. In this case, even though a situation around the vehicle is displayed using the plural images, the images may not be fully utilized. In some cases, the plural images may bring confusion.
A need thus exists for a surroundings monitoring apparatus which is not susceptible to the drawback mentioned above.